Mission Compromised

by Oliver North

  Samir added, “It will take you all the way into Turkey. The border is not guarded well on the river, and you should be able to stay on it all the way to Birecik, about 25 kilometers north of the Syria-Turkey border, located right on the Euphrates River. The trip from Tabaqah to Birecik is about 180 kilometers and will take another full day, perhaps more if you have to hide. Adana, Turkey, is 250 kilometers due west by air. It may be possible to take a regional airline from Birecik to Adana. Otherwise it would be best to go overland to Iskenderun. There is a train that runs from there to Adana where the NATO base you call Incirlik is located.”

  “How soon can we leave?” Newman asked.

  “Right away,” Habib told him.

  Office of Leonid Dotensk

  ________________________________________

  Hotel Rashid

  Baghdad, Iraq

  Wednesday, 8 March 1995

  0915 Hours, Local

  It seemed to Leonid Dotensk that sleep had become as elusive as the American Marine he was trying to find. He had finally asked if this American had a name, and Komulakov had told him: “His name is Peter Newman. He's a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marines. He was assigned by the American government to head this mission. And you had better make sure that your friend Kamil finds him.”

  Dotensk had been trying his best to do just that. He had been here in his combination apartment-office ever since returning from Tikrit with Hussein Kamil on Monday. He'd been on the phone with both Komulakov and Kamil almost non-stop ever since.

  Now, General Komulakov himself was on a special UN flight headed this way ostensibly at the direction of the UN Secretary General, to investigate the Iraqi military incursion into the so-called “Kurdish Safe Area” in the mountains of Iraq, north of Mosul—an apparent violation of some UN resolution or other.

  The Iraqi military operation, which had begun the day before, had been the usual bloody affair, with whole towns and villages being wiped out. Men, women, and children were dead in the streets, and Saddam was claiming over the state-run media that some CIA officers had been killed. Dotensk hoped that the elusive Peter Newman was one of them. The American air support for the Iraqi National Congress forces had never materialized. It must have been a rude surprise for the resistance fighters, Dotensk thought—just like the Bay of Pigs, decades ago. Oh, well. That's what they get for making league with the Americans.

  Dotensk also knew that the real reason for the general's visit was to conduct a house-cleaning mission with a handful of retired KGB officers. Komulakov was having them fly to Damascus to meet him there the next morning.

  When Komulakov had called Dotensk to tell him that he was coming out to supervise this part of the operation, the Ukrainian had noticed that his old KGB boss had sounded nervous. He had told Dotensk that the missing American Marine seemed to be always one step ahead of them.

  When Komulakov called from his plane, he had not seemed surprised when Dotensk told him that there still was no sign of Newman nor the truck that seemed to have spirited him away from the helicopter attack.

  Dotensk also sensed that Kamil was also getting more nervous—if that was possible. He had a dozen people working through the day and night to try and match the tire tracks at the place where Newman had disappeared. Unfortunately, all they had learned was that the tires were quite common, used on 80 percent of all trucks in Iraq. It would take them years to investigate everyone who owned a truck with such tires.

  Kamil had abandoned that effort and committed even more military resources to the search of the area that was the most probable escape route to the north, along the Tigris River. Kamil had said, “It is the most logical route, and the shortest, which gives it more credence. Newman must have been planning to rendezvous with the fifteen-man unit that we ambushed coming into Iraq from Turkey.”

  Kamil then rounded up every guard dog he could locate. He sent the guard dogs and their handlers out, forming lines on either side of the river, and moving north, alert for the scent of the American. It may have been that the items from the helicopter attack site smelled of smoke too much to be of use; in any event, Kamil had told Dotensk that the dogs had not turned up anything.

  Dotensk had not heard from either man in more than four hours. He got up from the couch where he had been dozing and cleared away the empty coffee cups and whiskey glasses, dumping them with a clatter into the small sink at the back of the office.

  He was brewing another pot of coffee when the telephone rang again.

  It was Komulakov.

  “Listen very carefully,” Komulakov began. “I am still aboard my personal plane and will land in Damascus late this afternoon, local time. Is there any word from Kamil?”

  “No… nothing. The tire tracks proved to be a useless lead. Kamil is putting all of his efforts into finding the American somewhere along the Tigris River on his way back to Turkey,” the Ukrainian told him.

  “That's what I thought. And why I called you. Listen, this American is very smart. He would not take the obvious escape route. I think he will go west, into Syria, and try to make it back to Turkey that way.”

  “But that could take days… even weeks if he has no help. Why would he choose that way, unless—”

  “Unless he does have help.”

  “The tire tracks.”

  “Yes. I believe that whoever is helping him is taking him across the country on a direct route, one that will not draw as much attention. Look at your map. If he follows the Euphrates River, he can go directly to Turkey. Once he gets into Turkey, he will be more difficult to capture or kill. I am going to take a dozen or so of our old associates with me. I have hopes that I may be able to borrow some helicopters from our friends in Damascus, and if he communicates with anyone before he gets back into American hands, while he transits through Syria, we will have him. Of course, he will try using his EncryptionLok-3 to call someone he trusts to get instructions for coming in,” the general said.

  “That device can help us track him. I had the UN communications people equip my plane with a direct link to the command center. If Newman uses his EncryptionLok-3 device, they can instantly check his GPS coordinates and tell me. And then, we can take him out,” Komulakov told Dotensk. “I want you to stay in your office so when I call I can reach you right away. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, General,” Dotensk said in a flat voice.

  “I will call you again in a few hours,” Komulakov said, and hung up.

  Dotensk wondered, Will it never end?

  Newman Home

  ________________________________________

  Falls Church, VA

  Wednesday, 8 March 1995

  0150 Hours, Local

  Once again Rachel Newman was awakened by her telephone in the middle of the night. This time she woke quickly and grabbed the cordless phone on the nightstand.

  “Hello?”

  “Honey… listen, it's me—”

  She screamed as she recognized her husband's voice immediately. She called out his name and began to cry. “Oh, P. J., I've been sick with worry. Are you all right? Where are you?”

  Newman spoke quickly and distinctly because of the poor connection. “Rachel, I want you to use that phone I gave you the day I left and call the number on that card. And when that call is returned, tell the person on the other end that I'm in trouble and need some ‘good’ help. Give it to him word for word.”

  “Yes… I'll do as you say. ‘You're in trouble and need help.’”

  “No… word for word, Rache—I'm in trouble and need good help.' Understand?”

  “Yes… all right. I'll say it just like that. P. J., what kind of trouble is it? Where are you?” she asked frantically.

  “I'll tell you everything when I call back. It's going to be all right. Rachel, I miss you, and I'm realizing more and more just how much I love you. I have to go now.” There was a click, and the line was disconnected.

  Rachel sat in bed, shivering with anxiety and wondering what in the
world was going on. She had never really taken that much interest in what Peter did in the Marines, but now she quickly grasped that whatever he was doing at the White House was even more dangerous than the things he had done in places like Beirut, Panama, and Honduras—and during the Gulf War, when he'd been awarded the Navy Cross.

  Peter had just said that he'd explain everything when he called next time. When would that be? she wondered. He also told her to use the cell phone to call the number that he left with her. Rachel then assumed that he was on the run somewhere, and he had not yet checked in with his unit—at least according to Sergeant Major Gabbard, who had called her the night before.

  Then she remembered the other instructions and went over to the dresser. Rachel rummaged through her husband's socks drawer and found the card he had mentioned. There was no name or address on the three-by-five card: only a toll-free number that Peter had said was Oliver North's pager number.

  Rachel decided to wait until she left the house before calling the number. She wrote down the exact words that Peter had given her to pass along to North, so that she wouldn't forget them.

  She tried to go back to sleep, but she was wide awake and her thoughts were racing.

  Situation Room

  ________________________________________

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  Wednesday, 8 March 1995

  0210 Hours, Local

  The White House watch chief called Dr. Simon Harrod at home and woke him up. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but this seems urgent,” he said when the National Security Advisor answered.

  “Sir, on the monitoring of Lieutenant Colonel Newman's house, there was a telephone call that came about fifteen to twenty minutes ago. The caller didn't identify himself, but according to what was said, and the way that Mrs. Newman answered the phone, it had to be from Lieutenant Colonel Newman.”

  The watch chief could hear a rustling sound on the other end of the telephone, as if Harrod was jumping out of bed and trying to focus more clearly on the call.

  “What'd he say?” Harrod asked.

  “I transferred the recording to a disk and have it in the MIDI player. Do you want me to play it for you?”

  “No, I want you to whistle ‘Dixie’ for me—you idiot, of course I want to hear it. Play the blasted thing!”

  The watch chief played the recording twice for Harrod, and when it ended the second time, Harrod said, “Put the recording and the disk in the safe. Give it to me in the morning. Meanwhile, patch me through to the UN command center. Have them get General Komulakov on the line. Tell them it's urgent and to reach him at home or with whatever woman he's sleeping with tonight. I'll wait… but don't take your sweet time.”

  “I'm on it, sir.” He pushed the speed dial on the telephone console and got the comm desk at the UN. When he identified the caller and asked for General Komulakov, he was told that the general was airborne.

  “Stand by, please,” the watch chief told the UN communications coordinator. Then he picked up the line where Harrod was waiting. “He's on a plane, Dr. Harrod. Shall I try and reach him there?”

  “Well, what do you think I mean when I say the call is urgent?” Harrod said sarcastically.

  “Please hold, Dr. Harrod.” The watch chief then got back on the line with the UN. “Dr. Harrod says this is a matter of extreme urgency, and he must talk to the general now. Please patch us through.”

  After a moment of hesitation at the other end, the voice at the UN came back and said, “The general will call Dr. Harrod right back. Please give me his number.” The watch chief gave the number and the man at the UN, in turn, gave an encryption password for the EncryptionLok-3 that the general would be using to call Harrod back.

  The watch chief explained the situation to Harrod and read to him the list of code ciphers for the EncryptionLok-3.

  Across town in his Georgetown residence, Harrod had just hung up the phone after jotting down and entering the encryption code into his EncryptionLok-3. He waited only forty seconds before the phone rang again. It was Komulakov, who explained, “I didn't want to take a chance that my communications were being recorded at the Command Center and didn't want our conversations to be part of the archive. What did you want, Simon?”

  “Where are you?” Harrod asked.

  “I'm on my way to the Middle East. I should be in Damascus in another five hours.”

  “Well, that's good, because we've got a problem. It's Newman—he's alive!”

  “I knew it!” Komulakov said. “I've been fairly certain of it since yesterday. I'm sorry I haven't called you to tell you, but we weren't quite positive ourselves. It seems he's a regular cat with nine lives. He survived the aircraft destruction, and the parachute fall that apparently killed his pilots, and then an attack by two of Iraq's MI-27 HINDs in which he somehow managed to bring them down instead of letting them kill him. Now, I'll just have to find him and I'll take care of him myself.”

  “He just called his wife, for crying out loud! He's on to something. He all but told her their house was bugged… told her about an accomplice of his for her to call… and said he'd call back.”

  “Interesting. I had no idea he was so inventive. How deep do you think this thing goes?” the general asked Harrod.

  “I'll tell you what I think,” Harrod snarled, “I think this thing's totally out of control. If this guy ever makes it back, he knows enough to create a real tsunami. We can't afford that. You need to make sure that he doesn't survive any more ‘hardships’ or—”

  “Are you threatening me, Dr. Harrod? It seems to me that you are the nervous one. I haven't done anything that is in violation of any protocol. And unless you have been careless and allowed Newman to make some discoveries that could compromise you, you should be all right as well. Now simmer down. When is Newman supposed to call again?”

  “He didn't say an exact time,” Harrod replied.

  Komulakov continued, “I think it's because he's on the run and has to make arrangements however he can. If he uses his EncryptionLok-3 to frustrate any attempts by the local constabulary to trace or eavesdrop on any calls he makes to you, the UN command center, or to the Search and Rescue center at Incirlik, we could locate him instantly—if I had the locator number for his EncryptionLok-3 unit.”

  Once again the National Security Advisor was astounded about the things that Komulakov knew about the U.S. command and control system. The knowledge that the newest EncryptionLok-3 devices had an internal “Locator-Command Destruct” feature was known to only a handful of people in the U.S. government. Most of the people using them didn't even know it. And now here was a Russian general, albeit one assigned to the UN, telling him things that even most American generals weren't cleared to know.

  Still, Harrod knew immediately what Komulakov had in mind. Knowing the locator serial number could give him the ability to track the unit, and locate its user by the GPS internal software. The rest would be like shooting fish in a barrel. “I'll call the Sit Room and get that locator code. Call me back in fifteen minutes,” Harrod said as he hung up.

  The watch chief was still chafing from the chewing out that Harrod had given him just minutes earlier and had just locked the recording and its copy in the safe when Harrod called back with additional instructions. Harrod thought he could hear some sullenness in the man's voice, but he couldn't have cared less. He told him to get the codes for the encryption device.

  “Dr. Harrod, I don't know where those records are kept. I think that's a function of the National Security Agency when they distributed them.”

  “Then use your blasted phone and get somebody out of bed. This is a matter of national security, and I need some answers right now! Now call me back when you have something besides excuses.”

  Twelve minutes later, Harrod's phone rang. “Dr. Harrod, the reason that we can't find a locator number for Colonel Newman's EncryptionLok-3 is that we didn't issue him the one he has. He was part of the ISEG, and they took care
of that matter through the UN communications office.”

  Even Harrod could think of nothing to say. He hung up the phone. He sat on the edge of his bed and lit a cigar while he waited for Komulakov to call him back. When he did, Harrod explained the situation.

  The general said, “Good. That's even better. I won't have to work through third parties to stay on top of this. I'll take care of it. I'll radio back to the command center to have them assign somebody to sit on Newman's EncryptionLok-3 and monitor any activity at all. That way, when it's activated, we'll know immediately.”

  Harrod flicked the ash off his cigar. “General, Colonel Newman must not survive his next near-death experience.”

  Pipeline Pumping Station Oasis

  ________________________________________

  Khutaylah, Iraq

  Wednesday, 8 March 1995

  1315 Hours, Local

  As Habib's truck pulled into the small city of Khutaylah, just twelve kilometers from the Syrian border, Newman tried to look inconspicuous sitting between the father and son as if he belonged here as much as they did. He thought he blended pretty well at a glance, but he was afraid he wouldn't pass anything like a detailed inspection.

  The three men climbed out of the battered vehicle and walked across the dusty road to the shade of a small tea stall where Habib ordered some food and tea. While they were waiting to be served, Samir looked around, studying the faces. “I don't see anything out of the ordinary,” he told Newman. Then he left for a while. He came back about the time they were served their meal and he sat down. Samir leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, and leaned over close to Newman's least damaged ear.

  “My brother-in-law runs the bank here. They are closing in a few minutes for the midday meal and will reopen at 2:30 P.M. I have told him that you want to make an international call, and I paid him for any line charges. He is waiting in his office. I will go with you and knock on the window—he will unlock the back door and let us in. You can use his private office while he goes to eat.”